Excursions

I updated my /now page today after a long time. I usually maintain a thought's archive as part of the page for the updates that are no longer relevant. The idea behind is revisiting the thoughts that once were at the top of my mind is another way for me to retrospect.

Today I've reset that section for 2021. And below is an unadulterated list of the thought archive from 2020 -- so in a way a snapshot (incomplete, sure) of the year that went by.

• I’m trying to get into a habit of regular meditation. I want to give it a chance again.
• I'm in love with the Hamilton soundtrack. I keep going back to it every now and then.
• Study Café Album on Spotify has been my go-to album every time I want to focus. If that fails, the real café ambient noise from Coffitivity does the job.
• I have started writing frequently now. The simpler writing workflow with WordPress is helping.
• Need to get the backup solution for posts (probably in WordPress) addressed.
• Focus on deciding on the format, the frequency and the tone of the newsletter.
• Where would my blog go next? Or will it stay here? It would most probably not be WordPress
• I want a better writing interface. Or maybe not? Why do I want to create something perfect myself?
• Need to get to the improvements planned for Wall.
• Read. Read. Read. Write. Write. Write.
• I need to finish the couple of books I had started reading in the last month
• Implement a micropub client. Get anything working. Without UI. Dropped the idea
• Getting used to the new normal.
• Write about and share details about Wall. Feedback and issues.
• Get IndieLogin working -- just been too long now
• Get distracted with the side projects, again. IndieWeb's done.
• Start reading and writing again
• Stop procrastinating items from *must-do* list
• Fix issue with webmentions from Brid.gy
• Send webmentions to target on replies/likes
• Support for updates in blotpub
• Decision on upcoming nearby travel
• Handle crossposting to Twitter and Mastodon for longer posts
• Style webmentions section to my liking. It is too bloated in the current form
• Start `\now` page to be updated regularly
• Consolidate all my online content onto a single place (*most probably blot*)
• Move old content from Hugo to archive (a Hugo site)
• Change stuff around

The effort that the developers across collectively spent on building the “small”, “light” javascript framework of their liking is way too high. Sure, build that framework – just don’t carry an expectation of it being perfect.

I am curious - isn’t a drone that can carry a human just a helicopter? A self-driving, may be. What about a flying car? What makes it different from what exists today? Every sci-fi futuristic world has such flying cars, even trains for that matter. I don’t like those skies.

If you maintain a /now page like I do, what do you write in there? What’s a good enough update? I keep swinging between very text-heavy and too terse – I haven’t found the right balance yet.

Dan Lewis recently made me aware of one of the most beautiful love story, that of Long Distance Love Birds.

The story would have ended there but in 2001, something unexpected happened: another stork arrived. A male stork. The two mated and shortly afterward, the male stork left, as one would expect, being a migratory bird and all. But storks are also known for being serial monogamists; while they don’t mate for life, they tend to stick with the same partner so long as that partner is on the same migratory path. In this case, though, Malena had no migratory path, and the bird that happened across her nest seemed unlikely to return.

Until he did, a year later. And a year after that. And a year after that, too.

Ah, love indeed is universal. And in this case, it literally has no boundaries. Such a pretty, happy story. To anyone who says long-distance relationship doesn't work, I have another real life story bookmarked now.

What Data Can’t Do →

Numbers don’t lie, except when they do. They [statistics] can help remedy our human fallibilities. What’s easy to forget is that statistics can amplify these fallibilities, too.

This discussion on Stack Exchange proves again that the majority, including me, understands so little of the relativity theory. Easy to think it’s easy. It ain’t.

So at what speed I should travel to make my 24 hours day equals 36 hours?

It was a couple of years ago when I had ranted about how the alternatives to the popular social networks are not seriously considered. A discussion something on these lines.

What all alternatives have you tried? Were there none that were good? If so, why? What is missing? How can they be made better? What is it that you are looking for in a social network?

It’s so frustrating to see the state hardly change. A call to tell the makers of the service why you cannot use their service is rarely answered. Sure, new social networks are launched, but they have the same underlying problems. They create unnecessary flutter and eventually die down. Why not create buzz for something that’s not aiming simply for the acquisition?

I love my laptop a lot more than my smartphone and my tablet. I’m more comfortable with the trackpad and the keyboard than a touchscreen. I can focus more with a lot more windows in front of me than say one full-screen app. This list goes on and on. What “Gen” am I?

I absolutely love the Daily Mixes that Spotify serves. Every new song or album or artist that it recommends is spot-on. Each time I need something to calm myself, I put on a Daily Mix. What’s more? There’s usually a mix for every mood. Two big thumbs up! 👍🏼👍🏼🎵

Does getting the vaccine lend one liberty to return to normalcy? From what I've read, the recommendation is still to maintain patience. And caution. Sure, it gets safer as more people in the community get vaccinated. But starting to roam around getting rid of the masks and shaking hands is not the way. Am I being too cynical?

The 2021 Oscar Nominations, and What Should Have Made the List →

It seemed obvious that the absence of many big-budget movies this past year would clear the way for smaller films to earn nominations, and that turned out to be true.

I know of so few from this year’s list.

The first “promise” Ghost 4.0 makes is “Turn your audience into a business.”. The first “feature” that it calls out is the dashboard “with detailed stats on audience engagement and business growth”. The answer to my question is clearly not for a blogger like me.

Meta Alert: Btw, the yesterday’s MailChimp experiment for email digest was a failure. The campaign (🙄) is live, it should send the email. It does not. Sigh, a problem that looks so simple isn’t. I don’t want to build a custom solution for such a seemingly trivial problem.

I am usually good at keeping the thoughts from my work away from what I publish at my website. I guess that last post was an unintended and a rare slip.

For that matter, I just don’t like the distinction work vs life. Work forms a significant part of one’s life. So what balance are we talking about when we say the “work-life balance”?

When do you consider it a productive day? When you achieve a lot from the backlog, but not much from the list of tasks planned for the day? Or when you achive just that one task at the top of planned list? Many might say the later, but the former is not bad either.

Another day when I think about all the meta stuff around my blog and how I swing between complete control over the setup and no control at all. Another day when I admire the folks who have custom-made solutions for each part. That level of dedication’s not trivial.

MailChimp seems to have a good RSS-to-Email option – this should work for the simple need that I have. Sure, the whole campaign building experience makes me a bit queasy, but not going to let it worry me. Time for trial.

I’m warming up to the idea of providing a daily/weekly digest of my posts to be delivered via email. I don’t want to undertake a huge project. I would prefer free options till I get comfortable. It should be a simple solution - RSS + email delivery, someway - right?

Is Your Dog Really Your Best Friend? →

I love my breakfasts a lot more than any other meals in the day. I can bear a delayed lunch or a skipped dinner - but don’t you dare alter my breakfast routine.

Stoop has to be one of the very apps that works far better on Android than on iOS. The later lags, stutters, doesn’t register taps and swipes often. The former also does all this, but comparatively less.

1. A bowl of hot instant noodles

2. An hour of reaction videos on YouTube

3. A pack of Lays late at night

4. That episode from Seinfeld or Friends

5. Idling away morning hours in the bed

6. That planned "sick" leave

7. Right Click and Inspect Element (Q) on random sites

8. Cheap, unnecessary online buys

9. Binge-watch session on Weekdays

...and that one simple pleasure - a calming head massage with warm coconut oil.

What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word “India”? What’s the second thing? And if you search for the stock images with the word, do the results reflect your thoughts? For many that I know of, the answer is always in negative.

Hello Friend,

After a prolonged slump in my productivity, I’ve been writing a lot more recently. I’m not sure what has brought in this change. Some alteration in the environment I write in had stimulated such a turn around in the past. A new keyboard. A new platform. Or a new place.

However, my selection of tools has hardly changed this time. It’s never the tools, I keep telling myself. Such tool-induced changes in habits are short-lived.

This recent quote from Halle Kaplan-Allen is pretty profound in that sense.

The best tool to achieve any task is the one that you are going to stick by. Tool proliferation leads to increased complexity, and increased complexity leads to productivity paralysis.

I recently came across a sudden surge of posts where a new tool inspired many people to get back to writing. Each person had a new idea that the said tool would help them in. “The simplicity kills the friction; that should help me write more,” goes the thought. That line of thinking should work, sure. But for the majority of us, our minds aren’t wired that way.

Judy Blume says, “you don’t write because you want to, but because you have to”. She is spot-on; I never want to write. I can’t force my mind to sit at the keyboard and fill the pages with words. I only write when I am emotionally involved in what I write. In short, I write best when I believe in what I am writing. Otherwise, all the words are hollow. The thoughts, meaningless. So, I welcome my recent creative phase.

Anyway, here’s a selection of this edition’s three brilliant works of writing. I hope they inspire you to write as well as you can.

A Personal View on Writing – by Judy Blume →

I once met a woman who wanted to write. She told me she’d read 72 books about writing but she still couldn’t do it. I suggested that instead of reading books about writing, she read the best books she could find, the books that would inspire her to write as well as she could.

Those of us who write do it because there are stories inside us burning to get out. Writing is essential to our well-being. If you’re that kind of writer, never give up! If you start a story and it isn’t going well, put it aside. (We’re not talking about school assignments here.) You can start as many as you like because you’re writing for yourself. With each story you’ll learn more. One day it will all come together for you.

The Perfection of the Paper Clip →

Minimal, relentlessly plain, and instantly familiar to a contemporary eye even in an advertisement from 1894, its persistence has made the paper clip the epitome of the disposable, anonymous, manufactured object. It is made for secretaries, for assistants, for subordinates and gofers. It only became most useful once there were millions of pieces of paper that had to be grouped, but that also had to be taken apart again. The staple may contain more potential for physical harm, but the threat of the paper clip is Sisyphean: once you’ve clipped the papers together, you’re probably going to have to unclip them, and then clip together some others, and then unclip those and keep going until you retire, or you get that break in your acting career. Perhaps if Microsoft had chosen an object less reminiscent of mindless toil, the optimism of its much-loathed Clippy office assistant would have seemed less demented, and thus less prime for ridicule.

How to Tell a Story and Others – by Mark Twain →

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the “nub” of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see.

Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way, with the pretence that he does not know it is a nub.

Postscript

Have any recommendations or feedback for me? I’d love to hear from you. Just hit reply, or you can even email me.

Thank you for reading and sharing.

-Amit